Christians unite against Bill

Parliament Square, Tuesday 11 Oct is the venue for the protest. The Rev Joel Williams, director of the Evangelical Alliance, says:

We continue to oppose this Bill as a matter of principle because it affects the freedom of speech of every UK citizen. We are committed to defending religious liberty and precious freedoms like free speech. This protest is about pulling people together to be a united voice in opposition to this proposed law.

Their motives may be questionable, and they waste an awful lot of time praying, but if the rally has any chance at all of preventing this potentially disastrous piece of legislation from getting through parliament, MWW wishes them godspeed.

It can be a bit discomfiting being in agreement with someone when on related issues one is diametrically opposed to them. I was in Carmarthen (West Wales) once, a couple or three years ago, and had just signed a petition in the street against GM crops. As I chatted to this affable chappie our beliefs came out, and, after I’d given my atheist creds, he informed me that he was a bloody creationist. To my credit (I think; correct me if I’m wrong), I remained polite and bade him cheerio after we’d ended our conversation. I’ve often wondered if I ought to have ended the conversation by telling him that his creationist beliefs were a load of tosh. It’s a bit like that with this religious-hatred stuff. Joel Whatsisname and I might get on like a house on fire talking about this particular brand of censorship …

Shell said…
“The only two positions are to favour censorship of everything and censorship of nothing?
I would have thought that those were 2 extreme positions held, in practice, by practically nobody”
Erm for adults, that is a perfectly reasonable position.

For minors, it is different.
Children should be protected or forbidden to do things until they are ready to handle them – like you cannot get a driving licence until a certain age.

But for censorship – either you do not trust people, and behave like the catholic church or the Kremlin and censor everything, or you leave it alnone.
You can always NOT buy it, or turn the switch to OFF, after all.

Reluctant though I am to disagree with a Tingey (as my grandmother was one), surely you cannot possibly hold that position.

For example, you would agree with censorship of footage of distasteful illegal acts.
Even if you didnt agree with that, you would agree with censorship of their broadcasting on a mass screen in Hyde Park.
Everyone agrees with some censorship. Therefore everyone takes the same position: some things should be censored, others not. The only difference lies in where we each draw the line.

In addition, the point about ‘adult’ not equalling ‘mature’ needs to be addressed.

Shell – The ONLY routine censorship I agree with is that of child porn. This is because the evidence of harm to those involved in its making is overwhelming.

Everything else, provided that secular harm isn’t imposed on the participants, is fine by me.

As a freeborn (?) adult I should be able to look at whatever I wish. I should be punished for things I do to others, which are harmful or upsetting, not for pictures I might look at in my own home or other essentially private places.

‘Everything else’ – I feel you are using the sledgehammer rather than the fine paintbrush. Surely ‘everything else’ is too sweeping, unless you have first carefully considered all the possible scenarii. What about a carefully graded sliding scale?

Do you really think that life is divided into two *unconnected* compartments labelled public and private? Such that one’s behaviour in each of the two can be schizophrenically different to one’s behaviour in the other? How would one defend such a belief?